Hamas woes turned into pan-Islamic cause
"Clerics issue edict telling Muslims to donate to Palestinian govt shackled financially by the West"
According to the article's title and the short summary above, I find little need to elaborate further on the issue at hand. It seems once again that religion has connected the Middle Eastern countries for a common goal - very expectedly against the West. The fatwa issued received very positive feedback from the ME countries:
"Iran pledged US$50 million (S$78 million) to the Palestinian Authority. Qatar and Saudi Arabia soon followed suit, pledging US$50 million and US$90 million respectively."
Yet Palestine is in a debt of US$1.5 billion making the amount gathered seem minute. Furthermore, the Arab banks have been hindered by American pressure making it even more difficult for money to reach the Palestinian authority. We cannot deny though, that these are official figures and we cannot tell for sure what goes underneath the table. The Hamas government could very well be getting rich as the religious power in ME cannot be underestimated. It can do much more than the West can boycott since the Arabic countries own a large reserve of oil and hence economic stakes in the world.
Meanwhile, the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - the so-called quartet involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts are working to establish a temporary financial structure to bypass the Palestinian government in their aid offered. This seem to work a contrary effect in their “boycotting” since this provokes and heightens the cause to help Palestine and the government in the Islamic community. The west may be applying a wrong strategy it seems.
Here, we see an obvious fact that the West has succeeded in disabling the government financially yet, politically (through religion), not much impact had been dealt. Peace seems far-fetched but the solution could perhaps very well lie in the greatest influence itself: religion.
Rich or Poor? Depends on where you live.
It has been said that taken as a whole, the problem with world population, usually manifested in the shortage of resources is not due to population growth as such but to the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources. What are your views?Does poverty sound like an issue faced by parts of the planet with high population growth? I believe one would not loosely answer that question. As much as the world is said to be globalised, we all know by Man's territorial instinct, there are things that are not (and will never be) shared. We may share cultures, trends, products, a similar currency of trade, knowledge... but for self-interest's sake, we guard our stores of resources well. What we have, we will aim to get more only. Thanks to capitalistic ideologies, trying to equate our share of wealth or resources will therefore be considered communistic. I would agree that it is this inequitable distribution along with a matrix of other factors that has caused the problem with the world population.
There is contradiction in saying that a growing population would cause these problems because developed countries of the world such as US, Japan and even Singapore are facing a depleting birth rate. The governments have gone to great extents to try to reverse the trend for fear that they will lose their pools of younger tax-paying population who drives the economy. Conversely, in developing countries like China where it houses some 1/6 of the world's population, the general public faces poverty and starvation. There are also signs of poor quality of life in the rural areas. If this is exactly what a high population entails, would developed countries try so hard to increase their population, so that they can strain resources and cause problems? Unlikely. Singapore with her almost nil resource not only survives but thrives whilst resource-rich countries like debt-ridden African nations starve.
Population growth may be akin to the spreading of tumors to parts of the body. Its manifestation if uncontrolled can really be problematic. Yet, we do not see a direct effect. The intellect of human beings has led to a very inter-woven trade system that sets to balance the demand-supply scales. We see how rich sources of resource can be distributed to solve the issues caused by population problem and we see too how the lack of distribution can cause a serious problem, to be more specific, the unequal and at times unfair distribution of resources. On the other hand, dense population in an area never really implied any expectable problem.
It brings me to the point that, the distribution of wealth is what really causes shortage in supplies. A growth in population simply entails more effort in solving the problems it brings about. The effort required is in fact no larger than how small populations have to manage their luxurious amount of resources. As such, it seems very unreasonable to blame a growing population for problems with supplies. How well a population thrives has very much got to do with the circumstances surrounding it. That can include the resources it possess, the geographical location, environment, diplomatic relationships, leadership and of course the people's attitude.
However, attempts to equate the distribution of wealth by International Monetary Fund have seen no improvements in countries they try to help. This can be seen in Indonesia's case where its debts had been rolling on since Asian Financial Crisis. Yet, this attempt to re-distribute wealth is very flawed with conditions that would only do more damage to the receiver. If wealth was really fairly divided according to the population growth, only then can we simplify matters and generalise that Earth's problem of resources would be that of a demand exceeding supply one.
In conclusion, population growth does not relate to the shortage of resources. There is much more complexities involved than the strain from people on resources. It all boils down to how the distribution of resources works and whether it
can actually
reach the population.
Blog Comment for: Science & Technology, good or bad?
A very well done opening that leads the reader into your discussion smoothly! The English is frankly stupendous with great variations in sentence structure that made me believe I was reading off TIME magazine. Language apart, the argument is also very well-balanced though I have some reservations in that point; it is a little too equalized for your stand of concurring that science and technology has done more good than bad.
The second paragraph had great rhetoric that works because it is easy to follow from those factors that S&T has indeed increased our quality of life and of course maximized our time. Certainly, no one would deny those points.
The third came with facts that supported your point of advancements which convinces us that S&T developments brought about many benefits. Not left just as examples, the evidences brought up were evaluated and linked back to the question of benefiting. This clears any doubt the reader might have of the discovery or invention which conferred higher degrees of persuasiveness.
A balancing attempt was made in the fifth paragraph, listing a few scandals that revolved the scientific world in the recent decade. Undeniably, S&T did bring in some bad which you dutifully recognized which is good but it turned the tables on you since the scandals did a great deal of negative impact on people. The degree was not measured in anyway hence the balance had done a disfavor to your well-built argument. I feel a good way to pull the argument back from being skewed against the stand is to introduce the growing of concern in ethics of research (particularly in S&T). You could reason that as much as these negative developments hurt the integrity of developments in S&T, it highlighted to people the importance of having a governing authority to control what goes on in laboratories. Presumably, without the development in S&T, these issues would not have generated necessity and Man’s morality would not have gained extra attention and grew in sophistication. This weaves the argument to a nice close that even thought some bad had been generated from S&T, the bad had yielded some good.
This could be a better balance for it had considered a much deeper meaning compared to measuring the degree of good and bad simply by the frequency. Frequency, it appears, does not imply the magnitude of harm or benefit a particular matter initiated.
Original Blog Post:
http://candy-me.blogspot.com/2006/04/do-you-think-science-and-technology.html
Global Warming: A realist's view...
Global warming is risking itself more and more as a doomsday cause. It has become a kind of nature created by human; one that is not possible to trifle with. The barriers to solve it ironically come from humans ourselves.
The causes are simple: the first discovery of fossil fuels as a source of electrical energy. Then, there was Industrial Revolution in the 18th century which led to a snowballing dependence on that source of energy. Carbon dioxide, an arguably harmless greenhouse gas, saturated our atmosphere now at 380 p.p.m. and rising in unprecedented rates. Ignorance is another cause perhaps as we go through our daily lives overlooking what our actions have done to the other parts of the world. Stewardship to the Earth is now a foreign concept. Granted Mother Nature herself has had a part to play in this for example in releasing gallons of sulphur dioxide and methane through volcanic eruptions or spewing large volumes of carbon dioxide and methane in forest fires.
From the records dug out by scientists in the ice of Antarctica where millions of years of atmospheric concentrations had been logged naturally, nature has launched its own global warming cycles before! It happened during the last ice age where some 500 p.p.m. carbon dioxide has been discovered. We may assume it is a natural phenomena but this time, humans are definitely speeding it up a hundredfold. Worst of all, we don't seem to be stopping.
Climate models have been generated all citing that current trends will bring about only devastation. We are walking straight up to an impending doom and no miracle is going to take place. Consequences are very obvious. Beyond a certain point, there will be positive feedback loops and then, it will be too late. The loops occur when the carbon dioxide stores (kept in check by negative feedback loops previously) get released. For instance, the trees which will touch up due to the rising temperatures will let loose tons of stored carbon dioxide and methane. Another example would be the melting of polar ice caps into the oceans. They used to reflect 90% of the sun's energy but now they will absorb 90%. It will become a self-worsening process. Sea levels will rise and devour most of the low-lying areas but sadly they are usually not the ones responsible for the disaster. Hurricanes will be frequent as the climate shifts and eventually El Nino and La Nina will wield their prowess in turning our climate upside down.
There will be famines, droughts and floods. All of which will destroy completely Man's ways of life. Of course, the worst case scenarios would be: gigatonnes of CO2 released from melted permafrosts in Canada and Russia, oceans becoming too acidic for marine life, Western Europe plunging into Ice Age by the stopping of Gulf Steam and the melting of Antarctica's ice sheet which would drown most of the coastal cities.
Are there solutions? Fortunately or unfortunately, there are. A simplest one would be to entirely remove the use of fossil fuels. Simplicity, it seems, does not tick with the world's functioning. Unless there is a discovery of a harmless and effective new source of energy, that solution is as good as no solutions because it would crash the global economy. Current alternatives are almost as devilish as fossil fuels (e.g. nuclear power), if not impossible to implement worldwide (e.g. wind, hydroelectricity, or geothermal). Even the best of all, solar energy, is as expensive (and ineffective) to harness as trying to suck up the atmosphere's carbon dioxide.
There are of course interim measures which can help ease the increase in concentrations of carbon dioxide. That involves making the current use of fossil fuel to be more effective such as upgrade fuel efficiency of cars by using hybrid cars. Also, we can try to store carbon dioxide under high pressure. However, there are too high costs involved for a temporary solution. More feasible solutions lie in collective recognition that the problem is a real one and has to be solved. The Kyoto Protocol is one such "realisation" but has been met with much failure and the targets of reducing greenhouse gases are about to be missed by the participating countries. The system works on the basis of credits of emitting greenhouse gases and companies are supposed to monitor their emission and pay for any excess or of course, sell their excess credits. This encourages positive work to be done on the issue.
That concept is a budding one and is still faced by the hard fact that Man is selfish. The solutions are failing because we do not feel the trouble that is descending upon us. As long as we cannot see the consequence as a tangible and painful one, it seems we will not budge with our current practices. It takes more than just one Hurricane Katrina for us to feel the pinch. Simply, the economic losses from “risking it” haven’t been seen to outweigh the benefits of doing so. Politicians are taking it easy so to say.
Environmentalists can prod their political counterparts but it seems it takes Mother Nature to show them what is about to happen through death and destruction for any serious ratification to happen. Yet, while some of the more conscious people wonder if it would be too late then, most of the rest wonder when they can save enough to buy that new car, property, apparel, gadget...
Poor Kids = Poor Adults?
Had I place the equal sign there without the question mark, I'm sure I would have generated a major controversy. However, if we examine the issue critically, there seems to be some truth in the matter. I refer to the article entitled, "Is it harder for poor kids to shine in school?" from The Straits Times dated 15/4/06. The article gave a couple of noteworthy statistics:
"53 per cent of Public Service Commission (PSC) scholarship holders came from families earning at least $5,000 every month"
"47 per cent of PSC scholarship holders live in private homes, when just 15 per cent of all families here live in this more expensive housing option"
"[analysis of the] National Youth Survey (2002) found that parental background contributed about 36 to 39 per cent to the educational attainment"
The reason may be simple: Being rich is a head start. If you have extremely affluent parents, they would give you special enrichment classes in piano, ballet, golf, super memory courses, speech and drama, and many other kinds of luxurious training inaccessible to the poorer children. Not surprisingly, one who has received such an all-rounded education would be at an instant advantage over their peers who may have only been through some mediocre enrichment like swimming or abacus classes. Their exposure to so many of life's wonders would probably mould them into more positive and competitive people.
On the other hand, a poor child does not have as much luck. From young, he would have been revealed to problems of living. Some extreme ones may even have to share the worry of the next meal. Life like this would cause them to be disappointed with the environment they are in. Friends then become their sources of jealousy. They will grow up with much negativity and low self-esteem. That would be the perfect breeding ground for juvenile delinquents. To top it off, they start out in moderate pre-schools which may not exactly be the ideal way of starting their most important of school life which is ironically the very means to turn the tables.
Opponents may argue that our education system balances the situation very well due to meritocracy. It gives each child an equal opportunity to succeed, as long as they work hard. I do not disagree that there is equality in the system because every child has 10 years of compulsory education. Yet, we cannot ignore the fact that richer parents have means to get their children into better schools (and hence better future). This can work through various methods involving diplomacy or excessive tuitioning. In short, they have ways other than being hardworking, which is the only tool for poorer children, and that gives them an edge in the supposedly fair system.
I dare not disagree with the other side of the coin. Being poor is not all bad and being rich is not all good. When one is poor, he/she appreciates more the virtue of frugality. He can not only empathise with other poorer peers but gain experiences from being less well-off - something their pleasantly-living peers will never receive. The disadvantage of being rich can be similarly explained. The richer children will grow up to be perfectionists and failures would irk them more than the poorer kids who have had enough stumps in their lives to manage these misfortunes.
With that understanding, alleviating poverty is not just helping the poor. Overall, it levels the playing field better than the meritocratic system. The poverty cycle is a continually repeating one and being a more developed country does not excuse us from it. I do not see a day where it everything is fair for it would take a communist state to do so but there is a serious need to help those less advantaged children so that the saying, "Everyone is born equal," will not be satirically joined with, "but some are born more equal than others."
Science and Technology: Good or Bad?
This question would not come with an easy solution unless one has read through the entire chronicle of human development and classified everything into 2 categories - good or bad. An almost impossible task because the differentiation of a matter into either good or bad is an oversimplification. Nothing can be all good nor can it be all bad when one looks at it from various perspectives. However, I could take a stand that without science and technology, life would definitely be very bad indeed. With advancement in those fields, we saw questions: some answered while others lie still in the gray area.
Our standard of living had been raised generally, even in the Third World countries. It is indisputable that because of the attention placed on biomedical sciences, we are more and more able to live with certain life-threatening or life-inhibiting diseases such as chicken pox, stomach ulcers, diabetes, or even just plain flu of which many forms of treatment had been invented or improved upon. Take diabetes for example, insulin can now be manufactured cleanly from bacteria and not harvested unhygienically from animals such as pigs. Many viral infections can now be deterred with the creation of vaccines. When we are old, senescence seems much more endurable with the availability of youth-giving operations and surgeries. An epitome of such impact of science could be from the fact that a lady at 66 years-old could give birth to a child just like any other younger women. In short, science and technology had extended our life expectancy with considerable improvements as well in quality of life.
Conversely, it also provided a controversial way of ending life: euthanasia. Even though it had been touted as a method to conclude a life of unendurable pain or meaningless life due to coma, it is not undisputed. Terri Schiavo had laid in coma for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state relying on life support devices until the mercy killing took place on request of her family by involuntary starvation. Such is the irony of science to not only increase life but to shorten it. We cannot judge whether or not this form of suicide or murder (depending on who made the decision) can be considered moral because it still takes away a life. In any society, that is obviously an illegal move. Considering the circumstances though, it seems to be 'the only way out' albeit not the best or most ethical. I would see this as a bad science since I had argued giving life of value.
Science and technology had impacts too on our economy. Research and development is now the hottest economics topic because of the fact that it generates insurmountable income just by selling intellectual property and needless to mention the products. The race to discover or invent a new technology drives much of the knowledge-based economy we are in. Rising economies such as India and China are using this as the primary mode of gaining GDP. In fact, Singapore has channeled much of her resources to building research hubs like the Biopolis (or the upcoming Fusionpolis) and training of research staffs by having regular research attachments for students to inculcate a passion for the sciences. This path had already been traced by Bangalore, a state completely based on research and development. All these for that prized investment from MNCs to keep the economy growing.
Yet again, this pressure to come up with new innovations had driven some scientists to cheat. The temptation is great for the completion of projects generates so much profit and the discovery of new grounds means promotion or being head-hunted by high-paying companies. The Korean scientist Professor Huang who submitted fake results for his experiments is the quintessence of such frauds. The desperation from the need to improve in science and technology raises question on our morals.
Finally, the price of raised standards of living due to technology and science is not zero. The invention of the first steam engine or of the first electricity-consuming appliance started the devastating phenomenon of global warming. It leaves one wondering if our existence thriving on damaging our environment can last. Due to industries sparked off by technology, so much greenhouse gases have been spewed into the environment raising the carbon dioxide concentrations to 380 p.p.m. and we are not stopping there. The consequences are grave and conspicuous now with increasing occurrences of hurricanes and droughts aside from the major climate change hitting the globe. We can almost easily conclude that science and technology is completely devilish because our planet's very survival is just about to be threatened by it.
Still, we cannot ignore the bright side of matters: science is the medium through which we realised the damage we have been causing; technology is going to be used to deal with the consequences and help the Earth heal from its wounds. And so I conclude, the question is not going to be answered in an argument; it is going to be answered in our actions. Science and technology can be beneficial or it can be detrimental. It all depends on how we apply them.
Terrorism all bad?
After the 9/11 disaster, terrorism has been scorned by both the Muslim world and non-Muslim world as a ruthlessly violent act. Truly, its value is largely negative in all aspects and the lives it had taken are countless. This could easily be said to be the worst ever man-made disaster which has devastated the globe tremendously and changed the perspectives of people towards these - bluntly put - beasts.
Has it been all bad though? I refer to the article published in The Straits Times 31 March 2006, "Counter Terrorism 101". The article brings up a note-worthy aspect of terrorism; it had set off an array of University courses in Australia. Due to the limelight placed on terrorism these years, undergraduates now get to study courses such as counter-terrorism, security and social studies into terrorism. University of Sydney, Australian National University and Victoria's Monash University are some of the Universities offering such courses and have responded that they have received substantial enrolments.
It can be seen therefore, that terrorism has actually boosted the academic communities in Australia. We can expect many other countries to follow suit because the pressure from the terrorists have not (and probably can never) be eradicated and nations are seeking their own ways to build a strong intelligence organisation. The easiest way to do so would be to integrate such courses into the Education System where potential counter-terrorist personnel could be identified and contribute to the efforts to prevent terrorism.
The course itself has its attractiveness probably due to the honour one would possibly gain in a counter-terrorist organisation. After all, so much hype on the evils of the terrorists must have also highlighted the nobility of the counter-terrorists. Therefore, we would not find it hard to find the courses being one of the hot choices for college leavers. Furthermore, to add to the appeal, games and movies in line with counter-terrorism such as Counterstrike and James Bond had long ago formed the superhero image for such occupations.
Education aside, the handling of the threat of terrorism had itself grown into an industry. Security companies are definitely benefiting from the attention from the fact that every single public and private building in Singapore had been littered with security cameras. Even public transports are soon going to be monitored. Biometric sensors, RFID cards and other security devices have also been embraced to prevent undesirable breakdown of our daily lives.
Such is the ironical values of such an irrelevant disaster. The need for security is classed just right after our physiological needs by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Without this threat to security, these industries will be shutting down. On the other side of the coin, would peace ever promote such important vigilance?
